Step 8: Save CDs

Step 9: Spot treatment

Oh no! The big dance/meeting/presentation/date is tomorrow, and you have a zit blossoming like a third eye in the center of your forehead. Instead of ...

Toothpaste. It keeps your teeth from rotting and falling out of your face. It makes you eligible for kisses you otherwise wouldn't qualify for. And it ensures that you drink your morning orange juice BEFORE brushing.

But it's got other uses. It can save you money, make you seem like a better roommate than you are, or rescue your TLC and Alanis Morissette CDs. Read on for some unusual uses of toothpaste. And if you've got a use for toothpaste that I didn't mention here, post it in the comments.

Step 1: Spackle those drywall holes

It was 10:45, and my landlord was supposed to come around at 11:00 to do a final walkthrough of the apartment to determine if I would get back my sizeable security deposit. My place was so clean that the radiator and vertical slat blinds seemed oddly prominent, but there was still something off. I hadn't partied with Motley Crüe, I wasn't hoarding cats, and the burglars left surprisingly little damage once the broken window was cleaned up.

10:46. I'm wishing I had studied "Highlights for Children" more diligently while I waited to see my dentist. What's wrong with this picture?

Ohhhhhhh... there are a series of holes in the walls ranging in size from very tiny to small. Stupid picture frames, calendar nail, and curtain rods. Why didn't I realize that I would have to move out eventually and fill all of these holes? It's already 10:48?!

What to do what to do what to do... spackle. I need something spackly. Something white and pastey and... That's it! Toothpaste to the rescue. A quick dab here, a gentle smoosh there, and voilá! Handled.

11:15. Full deposit returned in exchange for my minty-fresh apartment. Cashier's check, you and I are going to the bank before the toothpaste dries.

believe it or not, this may sound crazy bt i know it works firsthand. Okay, so when my oldest daughter was 3 she drew all over our brand new flat screen tv, wall, and 3 day old laminate flooring. I freaked, her dad was gonna be livid. So out of sheer panic of having no cleaners on hand, i grabbed my toothpaste, the good ol original white Crest. Rubbed it on the TV screen, floor, and wall area w my fingers. Left it on while i ran and grabbed a wash rag, kind of buffed n a circular motion... BAM! ALL of the permenent marker was GONE! ive tried it several times since then and its worked everytime. It can remove perm marker off any hard surface ive tried. Washer, dryer, floors, walls, tv screens, computer screens, ipad screens, refrigerator, etc.

Sorry Ms. Smarty pants but this works like a charming Big Macintosh. I tried leaving a zit alone and it didn't go away. It got bigger. I put toothpaste on it overnight and it went away like Discord. Not a brony? IT WORKED WELL. Don't diss somebody that tried it themselves. The best motto for Instructables and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Screw YOLO.

Twenty or thirty years ago, Darkie (now Darlie?) toothpaste is very effective for cooling / first aid for burns. 3 years old got burns from hot exhaust pipe of a motorcycle but managed to contain skin damage before bringing to clinic. I dont know if it still works now.

toothpaste can also be used as antiseptic ointment on small burns on skin. the thing about small burns is that no matter how small they are, they STILL hurt like hell, so toothpaste relieves that pain quickly too.

apropos of people having reactions to toothpaste, check the ingredients on the stuff you use. In my house, two of us seemed cursed to suffer canker sores but then I somehow learned that one of the ingredients on most toothpastes was actually the culprit.

Sodium lauryl sulfate is the villain: it's a foaming agent that, as best I can tell, gives you the impression you're doing an awesome job even if you're not. Maybe it helps get the Good Stuff into more places but I could do without the searing mouth pain. So if you have skin reaction, check the ingredients.

And as a fix, lysine, a commonly available supplement, is very good at clearing them up.

Another great way to prevent goggles from fogging (which I use on paintball goggles and would only assume would work for diving goggles as well) is to take paraffin wax or an old birthday candle and draw an X on the inside, then take a cloth and rub it into the goggles in little circles to coat the entire inside with a fine layer of wax.. it doesn't last forever and wears off quicker in high heat but it works amazingly, I've done it with paintball goggles (which would be the same as ski goggles) my glasses (because those fog bad under goggles as well) bathroom mirrors (for kicks to test it).. First time I tried it I held my glasses over a pot of boiling water and they didn't fog up or collect any vapors at all.

One more fantastic use for the stuff...when dealing with any malodorous stench i.e. a ruptured abcess in the back of an ambulance, put a tiny dab under each nostril before going back out to clean the rig. It works almost as well as vick's vaporub and most hospitals have it right on hand. This has also saved me from dog vomit, disastrous diapers and some road kill that we needn't talk about here.

You must be referring to chloracne which is a sign of acute poisoning by halogenated aromatic compounds. It is fantastically rate with literally just a few hundred cases over the last century. It requires that the compounds be ingested.

In any case, toothpaste has none of those compounds and the sodium fluoride (NaFl) used in most toothpaste is just the fluorine version of common table salt (NaCl). It's harmless unless ingested in large amounts in a very short time (just like table salt.) There are parts of the world were well water contains hundreds of times as numb sodium fluoride as you get brushing your teeth.

You can't say, "OMG certain halogenated aromatic compounds cause a rare form of acne so everything in the world with halogens in them must cause acne!" Chemistry, especially biochemistry doesn't work that way.

Perioral dematitis is just latin for "inflamed skin around the mouth." Like a fever, It's a symptom and not a disease in and of itself. It has many causes from infection to autoimmune disease to excessive lip licking.

I suppose you could get periorial dematitis from developing an allergy to toothpaste or from smearing ungodly amounts of it on your face but you could probably cause the same problem by smearing a paste containing table salt on your face as well.

There are many regions in the world where the well water has very, very high levels of sodium fluoride and other similar compounds. People in those areas suffer no noticeable ill effects even though their fluoride exposure is thousands of times higher than normal.

They do, however, have great teeth and bones which is were the idea of adding similar fluoride compounds to toothpaste and water came from.

Paranoia is about fluoride is one of those strange little conspiracy ideas that floats around and it has since the 50s when the John Birch society declared that fluoridation of water supplies was a communist plot. Somehow the idea took hold and despite decades of research and real world experience, a lot of people still think it has some validity. I think it's a case of, "where there's smoke there's fire," but substitute "ill informed chatter" for smoke. If enough people talk about the existence of possible threat some people will assume that there must be a threat driving the chatter.

I'm certainly no conspiracist, but I get acne around my mouth when I brush my teeth and *then* floss, whereas if I do it the other way around and am a lot more careful with the toothpaste, I get a *lot* less. So it seems to be the toothpaste.